Category Archives: Uncategorized

A: Of course! When I am having a productive day in the studio, I am completely present and focused, fully immersed in solving technical problems and trying to improve the painting on my easel. I barely notice the time and have to remind myself to take a break or stop for lunch. Nothing else exists except the painting and my relationship with it. The rest of life completely falls away from my consciousness.

I believe most artists regularly experience this feeling of ‘flow.’ It is a state of being that is inherent and necessary to creative work of all kinds.

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

Technique is the test of sincerity. If a thing isn’t worth getting the technique to say, it is of inferior value. All that must be regarded as exercise. Richter in his Treatise on Harmony, you see, says, “These are the principles of harmony and counterpoint; they have nothing whatever to do with composition, which is quite a separate activity.”

Ezra Pound in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews Second Series, edited by George Plimpton

New York Artist Barbara Rachko www.barbararachko.com shares her perspective on pastel painting, photography, and the creative inspiration she finds in pre-Columbian civilizations, mythology, and travel to remote places, like her new favorite destinations, Peru and Bolivia.